Biting the hand of Project Fear

Weapon of mind destruction

Ever since the independence referendum, the UK government, its agencies, agents, and its cheerleaders, have gone out of their way to rub the noses of Scotland’s independence supporters in the brown stain on the underpants of the narrow victory for No. Although they saved their Union, at least for the time being, the victory was not the crushing one they’d hoped for. The desire for independence was unleashed and remains unleashed, stalking the land and spreading the virus of hope, preaching the possibility of change. A year on, and the independence movement is still here, still loud, still proud, still organising ourselves, still putting the fear of Gord into the Unionist establishment. We came out of the kailyaird and into the streets and the cities, and there’s no going back. The independence referendum wasn’t the end of Scotland’s road to self determination, it was the beginning.

You’d think, given such circumstances, that a sensible Unionist government would go out of its way to placate Yes supporters, to stave off the inevitable as long as possible, to buy friends, to split enemies into opposing camps by means of judicious bribes and carefully constructed carrots. Giving Scotland devo max, and making this country the most devolved nation in the history of devolving would satisfy many. That’s only what was promised back in the fag end of the referendum campaign when the Union was a doubt. It would reduce the demand for independence to a level that might be manageable. It would keep Scotland addicted to the cancer sticks of Westminster, at least for the time being.

While such a strategy would not ensure that the demand for independence would fall entirely quiet, it would at least buy the British state some breathing space during which it just might find some means of reforming itself. The greatest issue facing the British state in 2015 is to find a lasting solution to the deep seated problem that half of Scotland think our Parliament in Westminster is so fundily-mundily corrupt, so out of touch, so unfit for purpose, that we’d rather walk off and start again with a Scottish parliament we can keep on a short leash. You’d think that this imperative would be even more to the fore in the minds of our rulers, given the utter humiliation which the Scottish electorate heaped upon the parties of No during the General Election in May.

But no. Instead the UK government is trying to return to business as usual, to pretend that the events of the past couple of years were like season nine of Dallas, and Davie Cameron woke up in the shower in Number 10 on the morning of 19 September to discover that Alicsammin was just a bad dream. It was back to business as usual, the same cast of bad actors spouting their hackneyed lines. Not even the destruction of the Unionist parties’ Westminster representation could force the spin doctors to realise that they needed a new plot line. They’ve lost the plot entirely.

We are governed by trolls who are howled on by arrogant ignoramuses who wear their lack of understanding like a badge of pride. We live in a country whose foodbanks are protected by nuclear warheads, where dying after being found fit for work by the Job Centre is the leading cause of murder, where the respect agenda means only that we must respect the No vote and never respect ourselves or expect to be respected. We live in a country where progressive politics means the progressive proscription of hope.

The solution to the Tory problem, say the Westminster chatterati, is Andy or Liz or Yvette, interchangeable middle managers returned from a Human Resources course. Andlizette have redefined sensible to mean whatever the Tories and big business say, and everyone else must sign up to that agenda. The modern definition of common sense is for a small number to get obscenely wealthy while raping the planet’s resources and impoverishing the rest of society, spending billions on weapons of mass destruction whose use spells the end of what’s left of civilisation. The role of the modern government is to manage our expectations, to ensure that we are quiescent and put all the blame on the poor. Andlizette offer everything that the Tories offer, only with a sad face, while telling us it’s all for our own good.

We’ve reached such a low pass in this country, that weapons of mass destruction are what we are offered by Westminster as a job creation scheme. It’s a shameful, disgusting obscenity. And our media doesn’t see fit to challenge the Goverment on just how many jobs depend on Trident, the number is blown up in direct proportion to the vanity of the politician making the announcement. It’s a number that blows up like a Trident missile. We spend billions on a machine of evil whose only product is death, and we are supposed to welcome this. We spend billions on a device that puts Scotland at risk, the accident prone nuclear base could make half of Scotland uninhabitable for a thousand years. Our Westminster masters don’t care, they already think Scotland is uninhabitable by anyone who counts.

Yet on the day that George Osborne came to Scotland to promise some radioactive viagra for the nuclear dildo that substitutes for British great power status, the Unionist trolls on Twitter focused their spleen on two Gaelic words on the side of a police helicopter. The greatest wrong faced by modern Scotland isn’t that the government chooses to spend £500 million more on a useless weapons system that does nothing except inflate the vanity of politicians while citizens starve after their benefits are sanctioned, it’s that poor North Britons have occasionally to look at words on signs that are written in Gaelic and so be reminded that Scotland has a culture and a history independent of the Union that they fetishise as the core of their identity.

I don’t mind people who have no interest in a part of Scotland’s heritage. I am quite happy for people to define their own Scottish identity, and if that’s a Scottish identity that doesn’t include Gaelic or Scots I have no quibbles with them. But what I do object to is them telling the rest of us that their monolingual Scottishness is somehow superior, and that their ignorance of Scottish linguistic history is a form of erudition.

And I object even more when they use their ignorance as a weapon of mind destruction, as a means to distract us from other issues, like the the weapons of mass destruction imposed on our country, the democratic shortfall that gives us a Tory government, the decline into sad irrelevance of the Labour party, and the obscenity of foodbanks protected by nuclear weapons.

Donate to the Dug This blog relies on your support and donations to keep going – I need to make a living, and have bills to pay. Clicking the donate button will allow you to make a payment directly to my Paypal account. You do not need a Paypal account yourself to make a donation. You can donate as little, or as much, as you want. Many thanks.

Thank you once again WGD. George Osborne is such a destructive person. He seems to get a real buzz from humiliating the Scottish nation.

What makes me very angry is that he is totally prepared to make our children even more expendable. Not one iota of thought as to the care and protection of children in Scotland appears to have passed his very dubious mind.

Whilst solidly disagreeing with the attitude, approach and ultimately self defeating position of the self interested leading lights of the Westminster bubble on this issue it is at least easy to comprehend that position for the ego massaging and self aggrandisement it offers to those taken in by it. They have a lot to lose and a great deal of personal individual and group kudos invested in it.

The trolls outside that bubble cannot claim any similar understanding whatsoever. It is a form of mass Stockholm Syndrome in action when whole swathes of people willfully jettison all common sense and sense of priorities in this way.

It reminds me of the story related by Billy Cornelly in a TV programme about his travels in New Zealand a few years back. Playing to a small town gathering Cornelly picks out an item he saw in a local paper about a whale which got stuck in shallow water and died. Local boat owners took advantage to run trips to the carcass to enable both locals and tourists to view close up both the body of the whale and the sharks feeding off it. The main focus of the news item was the fact that one tourist with a small child actually got off the boat, with the child, onto the dead whale in order to get a better and closer look at the feeding frenzy of the sharks.

Both tourist and child had to be dragged back into the boat before they themselves found themselves part of the feast, whales, as anyone with half a brain cell knows having somewhat slippery bodies with poor inertia characteristics. The point being not just the obvious lack of common sense and total gormlesness displayed here but also the issue of whether or not any sane person would allow anyone displaying such lack of gorm make any decision whatsoever which might affect them.

The Unionist trolls are fundamentally no different in this regard. Why in the face of such warped priorities against not only their own best interests but also that of everyone else (much like the tourist in Connelly tale), should those displaying such behaviour have a veto over the evidently more common sense approach of everyone else?

It must be like having to live amongst the original ‘wise men of Gotham.’

Yet on the day that George Osborne came to Scotland to promise some radioactive viagra for the nuclear dildo that substitutes for British great power status – *snip”

Far be it for me to contradict you Mr Dug – But I do take issue with this one. Tis not viagra or even a dildo – it’s far far worse than that.

It’s a pair of socks the UK leases from the states, which it then shoves down the front of a pair of faded Y-fronts. The Uk then strides around the world stage, sans trousers, inviting the world to take a gander at its package. The US looks the other way slightly embarrassed, the rest of world looks from the UK to the US and says “Seriously?”

The tories are spending political capital it doesn’t have to troll a nation that never really warmed to them. lording over or dictating one’s will to others breeds lasting resentment. Thus, paradoxically, the illusion that they possess overwhelming power to do so increases the danger of pushing allies into a neutral or even an adversarial corner, and/or drive away the uncommitted … which, taken together, can set the stage for growing isolation and continuing conflict, which eventually will blow back on them…exactly the way it did back in 97 and again with labour in scotland this May.

I’m thinking unionists are trying to make us all so sick and depressed with their endless negativity and self-hatred that we give up on the idea of independence.
No bloody chance!
Get angry! Then turn that anger into hope and enthusiasm for the great cause of Scottish independence!

I’m watching the First Minister lay out her ‘programme for Scotland’ and am amazed that the Unionist parties still don’t get it.

The unionist parties in the Scottish Parliament aren’t feart to challenge the Scottish government because they have a couple of big brothers who live just down the road and who come to the rescue no matter the venality of their little siblings. Can’t get their own way in Scotland? Time to run down south and clipe. Of course they hope that little wheezes like the recent visit of ‘Lord Snooty’ to Faslane will put Scots in their place and show the world that England is still one of the ‘big boys’.

The sooner we get the hell out of this discredited and corrupt union, the better.

Tragic then that Stu over on Wings should chose today to give succor to the Birtnat trolls with his own piece of anti-Gaelic invective, feeding into what effectively amounts to the long-standing anti-Gaelic racism of the British state, first instituted in response to the 17th century Jacobite rebellions?

This is a language that has been diminished by 300 years of deliberate oppression by the Westminster Establishment.

Many people in the Highlands and Islands regard Gaelic as their first language and use it that way.

Like it or not it is part of our national heritage.

To say that is should just be killed off and forgotten about is no better than what has happened in recent weeks to the temples of Palmyra in Syria. After all those were built for people whose language, religious belief and way of life are long gone so what’t the problem with blowing them up?

The logic is no different to saying that Gaelic should just shut up and die.

It saddens me that someone who purports to support Scotland should hold such a hostile stance to one of its most fragile cultural components.

You really think there would be more worthwhile things out there to rant against.

I usually agree with Stu on Wings but sadly this time he got it very, very wrong (as almost all the commentators on Wings agree) and for what purpose?

Stu makes a valid point, and has had a lot of words put into his mouth. I didn’t detect any racism in his rant and he agreed Gaelic is part of our heritage. Maybe he went a bit over the top, but his main point was about Carlaw and others.

Languages appear, flourish and become extinct, just like life on earth. A language will survive if it’s socially useful and once that usefulness no longer exists, then it will disappear. Painting signs won’t ensure it’s survival. That’s a separate issue from the British State’s (including many Scots, Highlanders among them) attempt to extirpate the Jacobites and their sympathisers.

The point is Broadbield his points about Carlaw were valid but got lost because Stu chose to have a completely unnecessary rant about Gaelic at the start.

His piece would have been just as powerful – indeed probably more so – if he had just omitted the opening rant.

He has had overwhelmingly negative comments about it – why can’t he just edit the piece and remove the rant that adds nothing of value to the overall piece but rather has just pissed off a lot of folk for no good reason.

Steve, I agree the piece would have been better without the rant which as you say added nothing to the real argument. Maybe it was to show, as he said, that he’d “still rather put up with Gaelic than complete idiots making our laws”. In retrospect it probably backfired, diverting invective towards himself rather than the “idiots”.

It’s a pity, if the messenger has become the issue, as Wings is one of the most powerful antidotes to the Unionist message, well researched, with evidence laid out and cogent argument. (most of the time)

felt total dispair combined with anger at yesterdays vision of gideon whizzing around on our loch, and proclaiming the benefits of wmd. heaven help us if the scottish electorate cant see this wheeze for what it is. of course the bbc had to join in the fun, two of the local residents in agreement with the whole proceedings. one anglo toffy nosed incomer, and the other gormless britnat who also agreed it was for our own good. wake up scotland, this cant go on…

“poor North Britons have occasionally to look at words on signs that are written in Gaelic and so be reminded that Scotland has a culture and a history independent of the Union that they fetishise as the core of their identity”.Great sentence paul. nail on head!!!
They do the same in Northern Ireland.
Despite promises in the various peace agreement treaties there is still no Irish Language Act.

Legislation from the 18th century is being used to prevent irish-speakers from having court cases held in their native language

Why bother consulting with Parliament on your principal weapon of choice for the supposed defence (or deterrent) of the Realm – or consulting on its best location – [an enclosed sea loch ? -hmm….not ideal]. Not that 56 MPs (or indeed the local MP) have any say in the matter…. and basic milatary tactics (over two World Wars and since) has generally been not to disclose to all and sundry the location of your submarine bases… so it is certainly a curious approach to ‘Defence’ to announce to your opponent (whoever that may be) the location of your entire fleet.

It is worth noting that in the heat of submarine battle it is not ‘Orders’ or even the consensus of Parliament that is ultimately sovereign… but the good judgement of (good) men.

On the morning of October 14th, 1962, an American U-2 plane from the 4080th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing flew over the Communist island of Cuba, and discovered launching sites for a number of SS-4 medium range missiles, sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States wasn’t best pleased by the building of missile launchers right under their noses and considered a number of options for dealing with the threat, from doing nothing, to launching airstrikes to destroy the missiles, to a full scale military invasion. Eventually, it was decided to blockade the island to prevent any more missiles being delivered to Cuba. Tensions mounted, as the Soviets viewed this as an act of aggression. For the first and only time in history, the American Strategic Air Command was raised to DEFCON 2 – the second highest readiness level. During the blockade, on October 27th, an American destroyer detected the Soviet submarine B-59.
Practice depth charges were dropped near the submarine in order to force it to surface. The Captain of the submarine ordered the submarine’s nuclear tipped torpedoes to be readied for firing in retaliation. However, to be allowed to fire, the ship’s captain, political officer and second in command all had to agree on this. Only the second in command, Vasili Arkhipov, was against the launch, but that was enough. He vetoed the launch and managed to persuade the Captain to surface the submarine and await orders from Moscow, therefore averting nuclear war.

Hopefully when the next such incident occurs a man of equally good character will be on hand to ensure our ‘non’ mutually-assured destruction… here’s hoping… hope over fear.

The MoD have stated that they cannot shift their nuclear submarines to Coulport as it was too close to a population centre. They seem to forget that Faslane is very close to the major population centres in Scotland. It can only be assumed that they have little or no regard for the safety of the Scottish people, and that the safety of English people is paramount.

Moreover, as bjsalba stated above, 85% of the workers at Faslane are not residents of Argyll. It stands to reason that the contracts, the jobs and the money will go to out of area (and probably out of Scotland) too.

If they want to keep their nuclear weapons and submarines, then there is nothing to stop them shifting them more or less straight away. They could, for example, park all their nuclear submarines and nuclear weapons in the Thames, just outside of the English parliament. Gideon could even be made Admiral of the Fleet.

The Scottish government should, at the earliest opportunity, give them a strict timetable to shift their junk out of Faslane. If the English government fails to comply, then we should sell off their junk to the highest bidder.

There are days when you feel yourself getting older. The down days when suddenly you notice aches and pains. It feels like its too much trouble to get your arse out of bed and partake of the world. Everything is a little bit more grey, a little bit darker and a bit more trouble than its worth. Your faith in whatever you believe in gets tested, rightly or wrongly, and you get the feet knocked out from under you. The past week, never mind the past twenty four hours have been a bit like that.

We’ve had a lot of that in Scotland and in particular in the independence movement over the past year, being tested that is. As a population we’ve been tested by foe and friend alike. We’ve been challenged to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves some hard questions. Who are we and who do we want to be? Who do we trust? Where are we going and how do we get there? Who do we travel with? Can we put the small differences aside to tackle the all too real threats and villains or will we, in our frustrations, fall on each other. Go back to the ways of mistrust over sleights real or imagined?

It can leave you feeling… tired.

So many questions and so much testing of our resolve, our capabilities, our willingness to evolve and adapt, our capacity for change and tolerance.

THIS is the hard time, the darkest time before the dawn. Its going to be a cold and bitter wind this winter and its going to blow through every street, in every village, town and city. Not just in Scotland mind, but throughout these isles. The bastards who are bringing this cold into every home have just paid us a wee visit and freshened the paint on the target roundel they placed on a chunk of our real estate. These are the same bastards who spent a great deal of time alienating the poor, the dispossessed, the disabled and now they are working their way up through working class to middle class. They’ll find a fucking excuse to first divide, then rob blind every strata of society in pursuit of their agendas and pay for their screw ups.

I cannot go back and I will not go back to indifference.

We have one more test to go through and its happening now, the test of solidarity and patience. IMO we need now, more than ever, to stand by each other in the independence movement. SNP, SSP, Green, Lab, Lib, Scottish Conservative (and there were a few), all parties and no parties.

Firstly solidarity in that we share a common goal and that our people need our help. They certainly won’t get it from that bastion of better togetherness on the Thames, so be prepared to dig in and give what you can. Clothes for rag bags, food and cash for food banks any and all the things we can do for folk the better.

Secondly, patience. For however long that dark, cold night lasts, it will be followed by a dawn and we better be ready. Another indyref is coming and we need to be singing from the same hymn sheet as to who the real enemies are.

Ignorance, fear, blind hatred and intolerance, the favourite tools of the state.

Just felt a wee bit off colour Steve. I think it needed saying though.

Sometimes friends use their public weight to make points too at our expense and that can be hard. We’re not all political anoraks or, as in my case, the sharpest knife in the drawer. We’re not all political strategists, social philosophers, writers or meeja journos used to the cut and thrust of debate. We’re just people trying to do our best to understand disparate complex issues and do the right thing.

So when we feel, rightly or wrongly, that even our friends turn against us, that’s when we need to focus on the big picture, what’s truly important. People suffering and those who are about to. That’s when you pull closer together, not drift further apart.

Colin Kidd (a unionist academic) said that the success of the union was down to it being completely banal. Part of the wallpaper, and people forgot it was there and if they did become aware of it, then they simply shrugged, ignored it and got on with it. He was only partly correct. The truth is that people were always talking about it. It’s why “Home Rule” has never really been off the table. The reason it became “banal” unionism was that folk didn’t have a public space to talk about it. It was avoided by the media, and fobbed off by the UK parties.

Now we’ve had that debate. The pleasant fiction that the union was cherished or blandly accepted was revealed to be just that…a fiction. To all intents and purposes the idea of union has split the country in two. Of course they want us to “get over it” – It’s not so much that they want us back in the box – they desperately need to get back in the box themselves. They can’t because the “box” was never really there to begin with.

They narrowly won on the basis of something the UK parties did not want to offer. The real campaign of course had been about dependency. This concept of dependency as boon was enshrined by Osborne and his infamous sermon on the pound. In five minutes that man took 300 years of union and declared that Scotland had lived on handouts. It had been allowed to use Englands currency and thus all economic activity in Scotland was subsidised. We have contributed nothing to the success of sterling. Nothing to the success of the UK.

It may very well be that many who voted NO believed that. It is also true that many voted no because they see some value in being British. It does not matter what the latter think. The narrative that won is the one about being subsidy junkie. That’s what this faslane deal is. It’s nothing more than UK charity. Why can’t we be grateful and be happy with what we have? Whinging scrounging benefit loving Scotland….we love you really. This is what you voted no for…remember?